Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks have been losing steam since 2000, and the president’s efforts did
little to revive them. It’s mostly forgotten now, but fixing this was a top
priority of the Obama administration in its halcyon early days. The President
came on the scene strong in 2009, determined to make resolving this dispute a
centerpiece of his agenda and starting what he hoped would be a transformative
presidency by demanding an Israeli settlement freeze as a precondition for
talks. This decision would quickly blow up in his face and put the
administration in a trap from which it has yet to escape.

Palestinians,
who hadn’t actually made this a pre-condition, were forced to endorse it in
order to appear as hawkish on Israel as the Americans. Israel refused the
freeze, as most seasoned observers of this hoary problem predicted, and in so
doing bolstered the Palestinian cause—sending the message to the world that
Israeli intransigence was preventing the path to peace. But the Israeli
government also benefited, albeit less than the Palestinians. Most of the
Israeli population disapproved of Obama’s ultimatum, so Netanyahu faced no
pressure in rejecting it and to this day he continues to milk political
advantage from negative Israeli perceptions about President Obama. (American Jews,
on the other hand, supported the President in 2009 and support him now. Those
who perceive American and Israeli Jews as marching in lockstep are either not
paying attention or are blinded by prejudice.)

Since
then the peace talks have all but sputtered to a halt, as both sides rest in
the mess the White House made. The PA’s decision to seek enhanced status at the
United Nations was one of many consequences of this failure, and the
President’s prestige and credibility in the Middle East has never recovered
from his early failure to achieve his self-proclaimed goals in the peace
process.

But
it’s a new term, and if the President was wrong in his strategy for resolving
this dispute he was entirely correct that getting Israeli-Palestinian relations
on track would be a major achievement and would materially assist American
foreign policy around the world. He was also correct that Israeli and American
interests are not identical on this point; where he failed was in developing a
workable strategy to advance American interests on a critical issue.

The
Israeli-Palestinian dispute doesn’t seem as central today as it did in 2009.
The war in Syria, the revolutions in the Arab world and above all the rise of a
bitter Sunni-Shiite transnational religious war have pushed the Israel issue
into the background for many Middle Eastern governments. When the Gulf
monarchies are focused on what they see as a stark threat from Iran, Israel
looks more like a strategic asset than like a hideous threat. When and if
Iran’s power is controlled, the Israeli issue could well surge back to the
forefront of regional politics, although even then the situation is likely to
be surprisingly complex.

Even
so, it is prudent and proper for the White House to look for ways in a new term
that some kind of peace process can once more build up momentum. The smoother
Israeli-Palestinian relations become, the easier will the administration’s path
become at home and abroad.

As the
President looks ahead, the signs are not all dark. A new Israel Hayompoll reflects that Israelis are still quite
sympathetic to the idea of a two-state solution. A majority supports it,
although most think that it won’t happen and that Abbas won’t be able to get
the Palestinians to agree to it.

Yet
there is still a major hindrance to productive talks, and contrary to popular
belief it is not the settlements. Or rather, while the settlements are part of
the problem, they are not the root cause. Many people want to embrace the happy
fantasy that the Palestinians are ready today to make peace if those nasty
Israelis would just stop provoking them by building new settlements, and that
if we in the West press Israel enough on the settlement question, peace will
quickly come.

At Via Meadia we don’t think the
settlements are helpful and we do think that new ones will make it tougher to
get an agreement, but we don’t think that pressuring Israel on settlements is
the way to get to peace. But that doesn’t mean being reduced to the status that
some have called “Israel’s lawyer” in peace discussions. In our view, the real
reason the peace process hasn’t succeeded in producing real peace is not that
Israeli settlements keep Palestinians away from the table.

The
real problem is exactly what it has been for sixty years: deeply rooted Palestinian
opposition to a two-state solution. While many Palestinians are ready to accept
that solution, many of those see it as only a temporary step on the road to a
single, Palestinian state, and a very large group of Palestinians stands with
the Hamas leadership in rejecting the legitimacy of Israel on any terms.

This is
not because Palestinian opponents of the two state solution are bad people or
stupid. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs
three years ago, the Palestinians who oppose the two-state solution have
rational grounds for their views, and the opposition is strong enough with a
big enough base to stoke Israeli fears that the ‘land for peace’ trade (giving
up the settlements as well as most of the land captured in the 1967 war) at the
heart of the two state idea will not work. Israelis, they fear, will give up
land but not get peace. And as long as that is the case, and most Israelis
believe that territorial concessions will not bring secure peace, the right
will dominate Israel on the territorial question, and the settlements will
continue.

President
Obama and other aspiring peace makers need to understand is that it is
Palestinian opinion rather than Israeli policy that is the key variable in the
peace equation. If Palestinian opinion shifts decisively and seriously toward
serious support of a two state solution and permanent territorial compromise,
Israeli policy and public opinion will change. But before that can happen,
Israelis need to see more than a handful of Palestinian leaders profess their
support for the two state solution on TV (while waffling about issues like the
right of refugees to return to Israeli territory off camera), and they also
need to see sturdier and more amenable Palestinian leadership.Hamas objects to recognizing Israel as a
state even within the 1967 frontiers (still sticking to its ‘one state, no
Jews’ plan, it seems).

The
question that haunts Israelis isn’t so much whether a Palestinian leader would
sign a peace treaty as whether the peace treaty would stick. Do the pro-peace
Palestinians have the will and the ability to crush any anti-peace Palestinians
who want, like the IRA did in Ireland, to continue the armed struggle?

Many
Israelis don’t think the pro-peace Palestinians are there yet, and looking at
the political strength of Hamas and of forces like Islamic Jihad that are even
farther to the extreme, it is hard to disagree.The Obama administration needs to look hard at the Palestinian
situation, understand why so many Palestinians don’t think a two-state solution
will meet their needs, and then think about ways to build Palestinian support
for this arrangement—without demanding more territory from Israel and while
giving up the right of return.

The
administration also must consider the future of Gaza, which is economically and
even environmentally unsustainable, and think about the future of the hundreds
of thousands of stateless Palestinians in Lebanon and Syria. (If Malthus is
right about anywhere in the world, it is in Gaza with its growing population
and limited resources that his theories could have predictive value.) Will they
get passports in the countries where they now live? Will a nominal ‘right of
return’ to an overcrowded West Bank and Gaza really provide a solution to the
problems that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in these countries (and in
Jordan) actually face? Will Palestinians continue to receive aid from the UN
after a peace treaty? What will happen to their living standards if refugee
assistance disappears?

A real
and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians has to offer enough
Palestinians enough of an answer to their real needs that a solid of majority
of Palestinians will not only accept the treaty but be prepared to enforce it
against the minority of dissenters. For peace to work, Palestinian police will
have to conduct constant surveillance and undercover operations against
Palestinian would-be bombers and rocketeers, prosecute them for crimes against
Israel and public opinion will have to support a long term policy of repressing
movements that seek to wrap themselves in the mantle of the liberation
struggle, have deep roots among refugee families, and can count on significant
funding from sympathizers abroad.

We seem
very far from that now; real peace looks like a long term process rather than a
quick negotiation followed by a signing ceremony on the south lawn of the White
House.

Past
efforts to make peace have tried to do it over the heads of Palestinian
opponents of the two state and have largely ignored their concerns—and past
peace negotiations have ended in failure largely because the Palestinian
leadership felt that the best terms it could get in negotiations were not
enough to win the support of the people. Palestinian opponents of the two state
solution have a real point. It’s an ugly and inconvenient truth but a real one:
The West Bank and Gaza together are not enough to support the Palestinian
people as it now exists.

If the
world wants this conflict to end it has to think much harder about what options
exist that could deliver a solid and durable majority of Palestinians not only
to accept a two-state solution, but who will also crack down on the inevitable
minority that will reject that solution and want to continue an armed struggle
against Israel. We have to think about deal sweetening for the Palestinians if
we are serious about peace.

There
is no guarantee that this approach will work, and it will almost certainly not
work quickly. There are substantive religious and theological objections among
many Palestinians about ceding territory to non-Muslims. At a time when Islamic
identification and militancy is rising across the region, it may not be
possible for Palestinian moderates to deliver a lasting peace even though they
sincerely want it. Secular, nationalist Palestinian opposition is also strong
and deeply rooted in emotional and ideological concepts not easily compromised
or forgotten.

It may
be that for these reasons, real peace is out of reach for now. In that case,
the rational course might be to go for a lasting truce in which neither side
gives up ultimate claims but accepts a pragmatic, medium term ‘cease fire in
place.’ If carefully designed, that kind of practical arrangement could buy
time while the search for a conclusive peace treaty continued. Such an
arrangement would not be unique. Russia and Japan, for example, have not yet
signed a treaty ending World War Two, and while their territorial dispute is a
real one, the two countries manage to cooperate and they aren’t shooting at one
another. In the dispute between Taiwan and mainland China, the United States
has promoted pragmatic arrangements while postponing the final status talks. A
long term truce of this kind would enable Palestinians and Israelis to go about
their lives in security and reduce tensions in a region that has plenty of other
issues to worry about.

A long
term truce would also allow the United States to work with other friends and
allies on building an attractive vision for the Palestinian people that could
come with a final peace with Israel. Instead of being seen as a power that
constantly blocks and thwarts Palestinian aspirations, the United States could
be actively working to put together a comprehensive approach to the future of
the Palestinians that makes an end to the conflict more likely because the
prospect of peace would be fleshed out in ways that made Palestinians more
willing to embrace the final agreement.

Settlements
are not irrelevant. Every time the Israelis expand an existing settlement or
start a new one (and from a Palestinian point of view, though not an Israeli
one, new housing in East Jerusalem counts as a new settlement), the natural and
understandable political reaction among Palestinians weakens the hands of
moderates who want a two state solution and strengthens the rejectionists.
Moreover, as new settlers put down roots, it becomes harder for Israel to
contemplate the abandonment of settlements as part of a treaty.

But a
strategy based on the erroneous belief that pressuring Israel to make
concessions on settlements will revive the peace process is unlikely to work
well or long. It’s more likely that the reverse is true: finding a way to
revive the peace process will make it easier to get the settlement issue under
control.

The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity’s Future? By Joel Kotkin. JoelKotkin.com, October 12, 2012. Also at New Geography.The Age of Possibility. By David Brooks. New York Times, November 15, 2012.Falling birthrates: the threat and the dilemma. By Chrystia Freeland. Reuters, December 7, 2012.Freeland:Which
is the more powerful agent of social change: fear or sympathy? Women in rich
and middle-income countries may soon find themselves enrolled in a real-life
experiment testing this proposition. That is because birthrates are dropping in
much of the world. Demographics may soon rocket to the top of the political
agenda, demanding an entirely new way of thinking about women and motherhood and
the economy.. . . . . . . . . .Kotkin,
for example, sees the falling birthrate as the central feature of what he calls
“post-familialism,” a new form of social organization that prizes liberation,
personal happiness and perhaps even a “hip” urban aesthetic over the more
traditional values of community and self-sacrifice.This
cultural critique – made, not accidentally, mostly by men – misses the central
fact about falling birthrates. They are, above all, driven by decisions by
women. And, in the countries where we have seen birthrates drop, they are about
decisions driven by women who face three defining facts.First,
women have the historically unprecedented power to control their own fertility.Second,
the old close-knit family and community ties that once supported child rearing have
been severed by industrialization and urbanization, and not much has emerged to
take their place.Third,
women’s economic circumstances have been transformed. Women in countries where
birthrates have fallen tend to be richer than were previous generations with
higher birthrates or their sisters in countries where the birthrate is still
high. But that shift masks some other important characteristics in the life of
the middle-class woman in middle- and high-income countries.She is
more likely than ever to work – and to need to work to maintain her family’s
middle-class status. She is also more likely to live in a society in which a
great deal of time and money must be invested in each child to ensure his or
her future success. And, particularly in Europe and the United States, family
income has probably stagnated or increased only marginally over the past
decade, and certainly since the recent recession.It is
tempting, particularly if you happen to be an affluent man, to frame any choice
about childbearing in the lofty language of moral philosophy, to see it as a
decision between valuing personal fun in the present over service in the
interests of others – one’s children and one’s society – in the future.But the
truth is that for most women, children are the most delightful and luxurious of
consumer goods. (Full disclosure: I am the mother of three.) They are, however,
expensive, both in terms of time and in terms of money, and more and more women
in middle-income and upper-income societies are judging, with considerable
sadness, that they simply cannot afford to have as many children as they would
like.This is
where the question of fear versus sympathy comes in. For decades, feminists
have been demanding that we come up with better ways for women to be both
mothers and full members of modern society. That has often been dismissed as a
“women’s issue.” So we have not addressed it – and now women are voting with
their wombs.Before
long, we will collectively begin to appreciate that the future of our
societies, and indeed of humanity itself, depends on finding a better,
collective solution to this predicament.

JPMorgan Chase & Co Thanksgiving Commerical. Video, November 22, 2012. YouTube. Also find it here.This video is a brilliant and inspiring evocation of the Jacksonian ideals of patriotism and American exceptionalism. A Wall Street bank using Jacksonian mythopoetic imagery to convince the public of its commitment to American nationalism and the well-being of the American people.